Monthly Archives: June 2013

Apologies for using that forbidden word in the title. Now the A Level exams are all finished for the year it’s left a void in my time that used to be comfortably filled with revision. Not to allow complacency to creep in our lecturers have given us a fair pile of exam questions from the exams we’ll be living in fear of eleven months from now to compliment our summer studies. You are all going to be studying over the summer, right? I’m planning on putting quite a bit of time into practicing my maths. I’ve heard some scary stories about Core 4, so I think I’ll need every advantage I can grasp over the next year. The grades I’m aiming for are AAB, which would nicely meet the entry criteria for both of the chemistry degrees I’m interested in studying at the University of East Anglia, which secured its place as my first choice university last weekend. I never got around to writing a post giving my thoughts on how my exams went this month, but if you are interested I’ve written a brief summary alongside my fellow A Level students over on The Student Room. I’m much more confident than last time it has to be said.

The post-exam feeling of emptiness I have been feeling should be very short-lived now. Two upcoming events hope to flood this free time in a manner similar to a bucket full of water cascading into a poor, unsuspecting jug, which consequently flies off the counter causes two of the family cats to vanish upstairs in a blur of black and white fur. I guess that scenario wouldn’t do the kitchen floor much good either. Best not to try that out later. These events happen to be Camp NaNoWriMo and the X360A Genre Tournament.

In a showcase of better preparation than November my novel has been named more than ten minutes in advance of the event starting. Over the weekend I hope to give a bit more structure to the fragments of plot I have floating around my mind, pulling enough of them together to make a strong start in the opening week. My last attempt fell victim to middle-of-the-month syndrome and the words needed each day started to rise dramatically as my writing time fell. They met somewhere in the middle, and my dreams of reaching 50,000 were over from that point. This month has all the advantages over November: there are no two-hour round trips to college; there are no exams looming in the near future to prepare for; more of my friends are participating so there’s more compet… team spirit. My friends will likely finish before me, but I’m confident I can land my arrow on the 50,000 word target this time.

My other activity in the coming weeks will see me once again showing some attention to my Xbox 360 as me and my partner Judge Bergan team up to fight for ‘not last place’ in the Genre Tournament on X360A. I’m not terribly brilliant at even getting close to the podium in these tournaments as they combine two things I’m quite bad at these days: achievement hunting and playing games consistently. They are always great fun though and my 360 enjoys the promise of daily use, so I’ll always keep putting my name down. The first genre will be chosen tomorrow. I hope it’s RPGs (which means Random.org will pick fighting) as I’ve had a desire to go back to playing Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2 and Oblivion recently.

Action will also be a good genre for me. Being a huge Harry Potter fan there’s no real reason for why I haven’t played the two Lego Harry Potter games yet. They’ve been sitting on my infamous ‘to-buy’ list since release and, as they also sit happily in the rather large list of action games, it would be a perfect time to add them to my collection. Twelve teams are entering the competition, and any correct guesses of my and Mr. Bergan’s final position six weeks from now will entitle the guesser official and unquestioned use of the title ‘psychic’ in all future discussions.

My half marathon at Coombe Abbey is now just two days away. Looking ahead to Sunday’s weather has given me a sense of relief. Light cloud and 17°C sounds perfect for running to me. Wish me luck and thanks as always for reading.

Yesterday afternoon I walked out of the exam hall for the last time this year. I felt good; OCR had saved my favourite unit (organic chemistry) until last, and all the revision I had done for this exam in the months before left me feeling like there was no question I couldn’t answer. That’s always an exciting place to be, and a feeling that maths and biology exams happily robbed me of. I can’t really complain though because my second biology exam opened my eyes to the existence of water bears. Did you know they can survive for over 100 years without water? Puts our 3-4 days to shame quite nicely. They belong to the kingdom Animalia as well. Yep, that’s one mark I’m not getting…

For the next three weeks at college we’re in what has been termed progression month, which technically makes me an A2 student now. A scary thought after looking at the A2 units in biology yesterday. This fun ride started today with my first A2 maths lesson, and continues tomorrow with biology and chemistry. We’ll also be registering with UCAS, and will be making a start on our personal statements. Once I start writing that I think it will really hit me how close I am to getting where I want to be. Whatever else happens over the summer break I’m not letting my maths capabilities slip away from me, so I’m planning on doing quite a bit of that over the summer. I’m quite looking forward to the taster session of decision maths at the end of this month. I’m hoping it will be as enjoyable as I found statistics to be (I was the only one who held the opinion that statistics was enjoyable in my class).

*****

My favourite colour too.

We’re now just under a month away from Camp NaNoWriMo, and what will be my second attempt at getting to that fabled 50,000 word goal. I fell quite a bit short of this target last November, but I set my sights on this July attempt shortly after the November attempt Preparations this time around will feature more than 20 minutes sitting on the sofa scribbling ideas down in a fit of desperation. No ideas for a setting or story yet, but I might drift away from Medieval times gone by and try something new. Now that my exams are finished I can really start to put some time into creating a plot and some characters, thereby giving myself a slightly more optimistic chance of reaching the goal I set last November. If you’re planning on taking part be sure to leave a comment and let me know. We can cross that finish line together. 🙂

*****

After a few days of toying with the idea, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and sign up for the Coombe Abbey half marathon taking place on the 30th June. This will be my first attempt taking part in a running event of this length, and is a neat 12.1 miles longer than the previous running event I took part in, namely the Sport Relief Mile. The plan is to go out for some early morning jogs during the week before heading off to college. Then at the weekends I should be able to do the same, but for longer periods without the time constraints of getting the bus to college. Focusing on early morning jogs means I’ll avoid the majority of the hot weather we seem to have been promised over the next few weeks. This is definitely a good thing, because my tolerance for hot weather is nothing close to what it used to be in my childhood.

I look forward to focusing my efforts on preparing for this now my exams are finished, and an added bonus to participating is I’ll get to see Coombe Abbey for the first time. If this goes well and I can make it to the finish line under my own power, I’d quite like to take part in the Warwick Castle half marathon next March too. All going well I’ll be able make it for a day out to Warwick Castle over the summer too. It’s by far the tourist destination I most want to visit in the UK, and is helped to this title in some way by their possession of a working trebuchet, my all-time favourite Medieval plaything.